The Gospel Traditions Inferring to Jesus’ Proper Burial through the Depictions of Female Funerary Kinship Roles

Reflections on the Nature of Jesus’ Burial according to the Gospel Traditions

It seems that the early Christians had a firm conviction that Jesus was buried (1 Cor 15:4). Juxtaposing the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ death and burial with the contemporary Jewish-Hellenistic funeral customs yields difficult and inflammatory questions about the nature of Jesus’ burial regarding whether it should be taken as befitting Jesus’ profound identity. This issue gets further evident when we consider the Jewish tradition prohibiting a proper burial only to those who sinned against God by disobeying the covenant (Deut 28:25–26; Ahab, 1 Kgs 21:24; Jezebel, 1 Kgs 21:23, 2 Kgs 9:33–37; Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae 1.30.5.594). As all the gospel traditions unequivocally testify to the early Christian conviction that Jesus is the embodiment of the divine Covenant and the true icon for filial obedience to God, the evangelists must have considered a dishonorable burial for Jesus to be impossible.

Some scholars have raised the possibility that Jesus’ burial was marked by shame and dishonor (Buchler: 74–88; Braun: 34–52; Daube: 310–11; Blinzler: 56–107; Cousin: 375–93; McCane 2002: 431–52), while others hold that Jesus was buried with dignity (Hill: 35–38; Craig: 404–09; Marshall: 76; Osborne: 559). J. A. T. Robinson explicitly opined that the honorable burial of Jesus is one of “the earliest and best-attested facts about Jesus” (131). This study maintains the probability of Jesus’ burial with decency by examining the way in which the gospel narratives of Matthew and Mark relate to the primarily familiar roles assumed by women in relation to Jesus’ burial. The result of this study suggests that the Gospels’ portraits of women's involvements in Jesus’ burial indicate that Jesus’ burial was perceptively carried out in at least a ritualistically acceptable way, if it is too much to claim that Jesus was given a full-blown, honorable burial.

Jewish law forbids the dead to be left unburied (Deut 21:23; Josephus, Con. Apion. 2.29–30). The same Jewish law and custom, however, forbade the executed criminal to be buried in a place of honor—that is conventionally meant as one's family sepulcher (Mishnah Sanhedrin 6:5; Semahot 13.7). Jewish authors such as Philo (Legatio ad Gaium 300; Flaccus 83) and Josephus (Con. Apion. 2.73) report that the Romans respected Jewish law and customs concerning burying the dead before nightfall (Deut 21:22–23) by allowing the crucified bodies to be taken down and be interred (D 48.24.1, 3). Despite the facts that Jesus was crucified as a criminal in the eyes of both the Jews and the Gentiles and that an honorable burial was traditionally denied to the executed criminal, the gospel tradition overall presents the female followers of Jesus as the undertakers of the funeral ritual necessary for a proper, if not honorable, burial of Jesus in a substantially suggestive way. It is worth mentioning that all four Gospels depict women's prompt response and involvement in Jesus’ death and burial in accordance with Jewish custom (Massek Sem. 4.29; Sifre Num. 26). These depictions of women imply that Jesus’ burial was not utterly shrouded with shame and disgrace and to this end women took a vital role.

To understand how the Gospels’ narratives relate to what female participation in Jesus’ burial theologically entails, a study of the distinct roles of men and women and their cultural significance in the Jewish-Hellenistic funeral rituals seems to be indispensable. This includes a comparative study of the traditional Jewish-Hellenistic funerary rites which comprise the treatment of the dead, funeral ceremony, burial rites, mortuary practices and rites of passage. Fortunately, a good number of literary and archaeological sources are available for the study of the ancient Jewish-Hellenistic funeral ritual, providing quality information concerning funerary ceremonies from the preparation of the dead to final burial (Gennep; Archer: 273–287; Bloch-Smith; Hachlili; Brink & Green).

The death ritual in the ancient Jewish-Hellenistic context reflects the gender social order, which was characteristically androcentric. In these ancient societies, the concepts of masculinity and femininity are commonly defined by physical, psychological, and religious opposition. Women were perceived as being what men preferably are not. The discrepancy in their given nature also meant the discrepancy in virtues which they were permitted to pursue. Under this social premise men held the monopoly of power and honor in the socio-political world. For instance, the conventional Hellenistic opinion of women, following Aristotle, regarded women to be naturally lacking in virtues such as fortitude and self-restraint but indulging in fear and emotion revealing the imperfection and illogicality of the female nature (Aristotle, Politica I.2, 1252a32, I.5, 1254b12–15; De generatione anamalium 1.20, 728a18; 2.3, 737a28; De usu partium 630; cf. Arius Didymus, Epitome of Aristotle 145.5; 149.5; Philo, Hypothetica 7.3.5; Josephus, Con. Apion. 2.199). Women were generally deemed to be emotionally vulnerable and prone to sorrow. Thus, female public demonstration of lament was taken as the natural byproduct of female love of tears and self-indulgence in grief. Consequently, a visible female display of emotion including even the distress caused by the loss of loved ones was often characterized as undignified and womanish lamentation (Aeschylus, Hepta epi Thēbas 1070–75; Euripides, Orestēs 1022–24). Ironically, however, the so-called proper funerary rite for both Jewish and Hellenistic cultures essentially involved the female role of keening for the deceased, which was in fact a requisite of any decent funeral ritual. Weeping and wailing were traditionally regarded as the province of women, especially in the context of mourning for the dead and lamentation at funerals (Murray: 184).

Both Jewish and Hellenistic funeral rites reveal that women took a leading role in preserving two prominent cultural values: kinship and ritual purity. Jewish and Hellenistic funerary rites in the first century CE shared a great deal of similarities while also manifesting differences. Jewish literary testimonies for funeral rituals in the NT era are preserved, for example, in the Gospels (Matt 27:59–61; Mark 15:46; Luke 23:56, 24:1; John 11:44; 19:39–40; Acts 5:6–10, 9:36–37) and the writings of Josephus (Bellum Judaicum 1.673, 3.437, Antiq. Judai. 15.196–200, Con. Apion. 2.205). Additionally, both the Mishnah and the Talmudic literature contain references to funeral rites, burial laws, and the descriptions of the rituals which represent typical Jewish funeral customs of the Second Temple period (1 BCE–1 CE) (Safari: 773–87; Rubin; Kaemer). Among these literary sources, the minor Talmudic tractate Semahot (also known as the treatise Evel Rabbati) is a particularly useful source. Semahot was probably composed after the destruction of the Temple and is included in the Babylonian Talmud. It contains substantial information about the laws of burial and mourning of that period. Byron R. McCane (2003: 30) claims that although it is difficult to assume that the third-century Mishnah and the Talmudic tractate necessarily preserve reliable information about first-century Jewish life, on the specific topic of death ritual, however, careful use of these literary sources such as Semahot in conjunction with other external evidence can contribute to a historical reconstruction of Jewish funerary practice in early Roman Palestine. Given the fact that burial practices typically resist radical change unless significant alterations in the social structure occur, McCane's view sounds reasonable: the later rabbinic sources generally conform to the patterns of early Roman Jewish burial customs or at least they might preserve useful information about Jewish burial customs within the Second Temple period.

An Overview of the Jewish-Hellenistic Funeral Rituals and Indispensable Female Involvement

For Jewish-Hellenistic funerary ceremonies in the NT era, family members had vital roles in the various stages of funeral rites. Funerary services were roughly categorized into three key stages, and the immediate family of the deceased were involved in all those stages:

The final entombment of the deceased signified both the departure of the one who once belonged to the present world and his entrance into the other world. Thereby, the ultimate separation was seen to have been achieved.

Prompt burial of the dead was the Jewish custom in early Roman Palestine both in Judea and in Galilee. The funeral was customarily conducted without delay as soon as the certainty of death was confirmed. Semahot 8.1 records an interesting case of a hastened burial where a man was found to have been buried alive even before his death was certain. In most cases the body had been prepared promptly after death and buried by sunset on the same day (m. Sanhedrin 6.6; Semahot 1:4.5, 2.13, 8.1, 9.9, 12.10, 13.7; Josephus, Bell. Judai. 4.317, Contra Apionem 2.205, 211; Mark 5:38; John 11:44). According to the NT, the funeral preparations and burials of both Jairus's daughter (Mark 5) and Lazarus (John 11) seem to occur promptly, perhaps on the same day as their deaths. However, there are some exceptions to the rule. Mishnah Sanhedrin 6.5 says that a corpse should be kept unburied overnight only if the extra time is required to prepare a bier and the funeral clothes. Semahot 9.9 and 9.15 note that although burial should not be delayed, the burial of one's parents could be an exception.

An array of preparations of the corpse occurred in the funerary ritual stages of contamination and transition. As soon as the death was confirmed, the body of the dead became a source of ritual contamination and was therefore identified as an object of purification (Retief: 44–61). One of the main reasons why the Jews traditionally undertook a prompt burial of the dead was to avoid defilement of the land of Israel (see Deut 14:2, 21:22–23; Num 35:34; Ezek 39: 14, 16; and cf. 11QT 48:10–14). As soon as the last breath was exhaled, the eyes and the mouth of the deceased were usually shut by the eldest son or next distinguished male relative (Gen 46:4). At the stage of transition, the corpse was bathed with water and then anointed with aromatic ointments. Biblical literary evidence attest to the use of various spices. Aloes or myrtles were used mainly to remove the odor (John 12:7) and were carried in the funerary procession (John 19:39).

Also, expensive and high quality spices were used as a sign of honor for dead kings (2 Chr 16:14, 21:19; Jer 34:5). Further, the openings of the body were stopped, the hands were fixed to the sides and the feet were tied together for the next step, wrapping the body in plain white linen, cotton, or muslin shroud (tachrichim; Mishnah Shabbat 23.5; Matt 27:59; Mark 15:46; Luke 23:53; John 11:44, 12:7, 19:39; Acts 9:37). According to the Talmud, Rabban Gamaliel instituted simple white linen garments (tachrichim) to signify that there was no longer a distinction between the rich and the poor (Moed Katan 27a, b). It was a common practice in both Jewish and Roman funeral rites that men may wrap and bind the corpse of a man, but not that of a woman. Women may wrap and bind either a male or a female corpse (Semahot 12.10; Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae, Moralia 270d–e). It is important to note that all these initial preparations of the dead in these two essential stages of the funeral rites, which were indispensable for a proper burial, were traditionally women's duty and that these activities took place at the house of the deceased, particularly in its interior room, as the interior room was closely associated with the private and intimate domain of women (Saller: 87; Klingshirn: 36; Zamfir: 87).

When the body of the dead was given anointing, washing, adorning, wrapping, and vigil by the women of the household, the dead was considered to be ready for the last stage of separation. The corpse was placed on some kind of bier (mi⃛⃛ah) and was carried out by the bearers (kattafim) in a procession to the family tomb (2 Sam 3:31; 2 Kgs 13:21; Josephus, Antiq. Judai. 17.8; Berakhot 3.1). This was the first time the deceased was presented in a public arena in its radical change of existence. At the place of interment the body was finally placed in a coffin or the family sepulcher. According to Jewish religious sentiment, burying the dead in his family sepulcher was regarded as highly important since for the Jews to die entailed being gathered unto one's people (Gen 23:4–19, 49:29, 50:4–14; Num 27:13; Josh 24:32; Judges 2:10; 1 Sam 31:12–13; 2 Sam 2:4–5, 19:38, 21:12–14; 2 Kings 21:18, 26, 28:30; Isa 22:16; Tobit 1:18–20, 2:3–8, 4:3–4, 6:15, 14:10–13).

The Jewish funeral procession was incomplete without the presence of keening women, though both men and women accompanied the procession. The women were placed, as a rule, in front of the bier, since a woman brought death upon the world (Yer. Sanhedrin 2. 20b; Genesis Rabba 17). The female relatives of the deceased constituted the main keeners along with some hired professional keeners at times. The women's role in keening involved forms of beating the chest, disheveling their hair, and chanting dirges known as kinoth. The chief mode of burial employed by the Jewish peoplew was placing the corpse either in the ground or in caves in the rock (Gen 23:19, 25:9, 35:8; Deut 34:6; Josh 24:30; Judges 8:32; 1 Sam 25:1). Jewish tombs were commonly carved into the soft limestone bedrock (Mark 15:46; John 11:38). After the family placed the coffin in the tomb, they sealed the entrance of the tomb with the sealing stone and returned home. The funeral ceremony in the stage of separation did not end there but continued to the family members’ visit to the tomb on the third day and observation of additional mourning periods. On the third day the family visited the tomb, bringing spices and ointments for further treatment of the body and further mourning (Safari: 773–87; Rubin: 103–13; Kraemer: 21).

The period of mourning was primarily observed by the immediate family members of the dead in two stages, shiv'ah and shloshim (Ben Sira 22:11–12, 38:16–23; Josephus, Bell. Judai. 2.1). The first stage of mourning, shiv'ah refers to a seven-day period of intense grieving. The immediate family kept the ritualistic abstinence by separating themselves from the outside world and by disowning what was normal to them on a daily basis such as the things which were linked to comfort, pleasure, and social participation (Semahot 6:1; Pirke Avot 4:18). During shiv'ah the immediate family members of the dead stayed away from work, sat at home upon low couches, and covered their heads to receive condolences from relatives and friends.

The family members abstained from working, bathing, cutting hair, inverting the bed, wearing shoes, and social gatherings (Rahmani: 175). During this period they might leave home to visit the tomb on the third day from the burial as we see likewise in the gospel witnesses regarding the women's visit to Jesus’ tomb (Matt 28:1–8; Mark 16:2–8; Luke 24:1–8; John 20:1). After the first seven days of intense mourning, a thirty-day period of less intense mourning, the so-called, shloshim began. In the case of the death of one's parents (Semahot 9.15), the second stage of mourning was extended to a full year. During this stage of mourning, the family members still remained in abstinence but slowly and gradually resumed the normal life activities under some restrictions (Semahot 9.14–15). The family members were still not to work, leave town, cut their hair, or attend social gatherings and festive occasions. By the end of shloshim the mourners’ ritualistic exclusion from society largely ended.

The Roman burial custom was similar to the classical Athenian funeral rites as a result of the sweeping Hellenization of the Eastern Mediterranean world (Hill & Williams: 75). The classical Hellenistic funeral rites show quite rigid sexual divisions both in space and role distinction. Athenian potteries traditionally depict three scenes: the prothesis (the laying out of the corpse), the ekphora (the procession to the grave), and the visit to the tomb. These were a standardized set of death rituals. The prothesis, the laying out of the corpse, was the initial act preparing the deceased for burial. Women chiefly presided over three phases of the prothesis: the washing of the body, its preparation for burial, and the vigil over the body. Upon death the eyes and mouth of the deceased were closed and the corpse was washed and then wrapped in many layers of fabric (stroma) by the women of the household. Then it was laid out on the bier (klinê). The prothesis was an event staged within the interior of the house of the dead. The female role in the prothesis loomed large in that women tended the corpse before and during prothesis (Stears: 92).

Both men and women participated in mourning but the actions of each sex are clearly differentiated in the common representation of prothesis scenes depicted in some funerary artifacts. During the prothesis, women in the family surrounded the deceased (Lécrivian: 1373; Smith: 884). While the disheveled women were posed with both arms raised to the head and their cheeks occasionally lacerated as a sign of profound grief, the male members of the household received the guests in a dignified and restrained demeanor.

The male guests entered the scene in an orderly procession while women unresponsive to the procession stood closely around the corpse—their chief focus of interest. The chief female mourners were gathered near the head of the deceased and expressed sorrow (Cicero, In Verrem 5.118). This contrasting depiction of men and women in their expression of sorrow shows that the control of emotional display by men was a tenet central to understanding gender ideology in the Hellenistic funerary rituals. The ancient Hellenistic world's belief that the socially weak such as women and children could not be expected to control their emotions while men should be always in control of their emotions is evident from the earliest Socratic discourses (Plato, Meno 71e-73b, 99d; Phaedo 116b, 117d–e; Menexenus 235e–238a, 249d).

On the third day after death, the ceremony ekphora occurs. This second stage of the Hellenistic funeral practice involved taking the corpse out to the cemetery for burial. Both sexes attended the ekphora. What the ekphora symbolized was that the funeral left the semipublic world of the oikos and now entered the public world of the polis, which was inherently the male political world. Here the men took center stage, leading the procession and carrying the corpse. Women were still present, lamenting openly and walking separately from the men—following the cart, which was led by men. After the burial rites, the mourners returned to the home of the deceased to partake in the funeral meal (perideipnon), and to bathe in order to purify themselves from the ritual pollution to which they had been exposed. Afterwards, additional rituals were performed on behalf of the dead. On the third (ta trita) and ninth day (ta enata) after the burial, food, libations, and other offerings were placed on the new tomb. Also, the house of the deceased mourned the dead for an additional thirty days (triakostia).

Ritual disposal of the dead was laden with symbolic representations and ceremonial performances that celebrated, sustained, reinforced, and repaired the social-religious system. What death implied to the ancient minds was more than just the ending of the physical life of a mortal body; it was an abrupt rupture in the fabric of a society, because death forcibly removed a member of a social network, and in so doing, called into question the ongoing viability of the network as a whole. In this light, a proper burial for the dead given by the family of the deceased was considered a vital means of “healing” a social group that experienced a significant alteration in its structure by the loss of its member. For the Jews in early Roman Palestine, the involvement of kin in the funeral was a proven social norm. A contemporary Jewish-Hellenistic historian, Flavius Josephus, stated that “the funeral ceremony is to be undertaken by the nearest relatives” (Con. Apion. 2.205). For Jewish funeral rituals, familiar relations were celebrated in the rituals of primary burial, mourning, the family tomb, and secondary burial (osilegium), as well as in a private cult of the dead.

Female Latent Authority Exercised in the Rites of Passage

Women were at the center of rites of passage such as birth, marriage, and death, which were primarily kinship-oriented affairs and major transitions in areas of life and death over which society had no real control. In the Jewish-Hellenistic world, the only long-term roles available to a woman were being wife and mother. In these categorical female roles, women took a dominant position as the builder and nurturer of the familiar group. In childbirth, a woman marked a change in life and the relational network of a society by bringing in a new member. Also, in marriage she experienced a crucial change in her life from virgin (parthenos) to bride (nymphe), and most importantly, she became a woman (gyne) in her capacity to reinforce and expand the familiar and social network by producing heirs. Female roles in funerary rituals were no less significant in the sense that although the funeral was one of the ritual practices serving to reinforce the dominant ideological gender disparity of the Greco-Roman world, female ritual activities might have allowed women to gain access to covert power and authority. Since the chief female social function in the patriarchal social context of the early Christian world was essentially restricted to kinship-oriented affairs such as kinship building, reinforcing the kinship network, and honoring kinship memory, the gospel tradition's accounts of the faithful women's roles in the death and burial of Jesus cast an ambience of propriety to Jesus’ burial.

Over the centuries women served as the familial overseers of the funerary ritual sanctity that affected the social whole. It has been argued that distinctively female funerary roles such as anointing and keening should be taken as markers of female inferiority, female inescapability of the status of being polluted, and female subjection to gender disparity of the ancient patriarchal societies including the early Christian world (Bloch: 211–30; Havelock: 45–61; Dubisch: 195–214; Shapiro: 629–56). Although these claims might harbor some grain of truth, ironically women distinguished themselves as dominant in high-anxiety ridden social contexts such as death rituals.

Despite the fact that multiple restrictions and prohibitions were imposed on women in death rituals, the following three points indicate that women exercised indispensable roles in death rituals and therefore exercised latent authority.

First, in the Jewish-Hellenistic context of the early Christian world, both birth and death were regarded as a source of ritual pollution, referred to as miasma, and miasma has been considered a factor in accounting for the prominent role of women in these rites of passages which bridge the worlds of life and death. The Jewish tradition viewed women as being close to the world of spirits, attracting danger and pollution (Berakhot 51a). From the Hellenistic perspective, women in their childbearing capacity were both able to pollute and be polluted, and this connoted female marginality. While the Romans refrained from having contact with menstruating and postpartum women because women with these conditions were believed to pollute (Wrigley: 264–66; Hin: 197), women were also regarded as being polluted since female bodies receive male semen on which the miasma surrounding sexual intercourse was supposed to be centered (Meigs: 312; Parker: 65–66; Nutton: 71). Therefore, women were regarded as having the ability to pollute and to withstand polluting at the same time. In a similar vein, Jewish custom regarded women as the locus of ritual impurity due to postpartum (Lev 12:1–5) and menstruation (Lev 15:19–27). Strictly speaking, menstrual taboos are not exclusively associated with certain religious traditions; all major religions have placed restrictions on menstruating women (Paige: 211; Bhartiya: 523). In various ancient patriarchal cultures including the imperial Roman society of the early Christian world, the notion of female ritual impurity was fundamentally attributed to female menstruation, and this kept women out of the public and religious domain of leadership. Nevertheless, it is truly ironic that female menstruation was identified with pollution from which men should be guarded despite the fact that female menstruation is the bodily manifestation of female health and sexual vitality to bear a child. Hippocratic medical writers considered female menstruation as a sign of health and an important transition in a woman's life (Cole 1998: 28). In other words, even though female menstruation was regarded as a detrimental sign of her state of being polluted, as medical professionals confirmed, female menstruation was the manifestation of her sexual ability to engage in procreative activity and produce an heir by absorbing the miasma of a male. Based on the culturally given link between women and miasma, it would be reasonable to consider that women were made suitable as caregivers in situations where pollution was inevitable.

Such a conventional notion might have been reinforced by the dominant social ideas that women were collectively regarded as not being able to biologically escape innate pollutions related to menstruation and childbirth and that consolidating kinship in birth and death circumstances was a chief female domestic role. Even though the female care of the dead could be interpreted as the indicator of women's marginal social status due to gender, women's aptitude to provide an intimate and immediate handling of the miasma in rites of passage such as death appears to be extraordinary in that women functioned as a buffer or a shock-absorber between the threat of the miasma and the sanity of society. For this, Sarah I. Johnston (101–02) and Susan G. Cole (2000: 119) claim that women protected their male family members from the contamination of death by preparing the corpse for burial and performing laments for the dead.

Second, women wielded authority and latent power in death rituals through their possession of ritual knowledge with spiritual properties. We should not underestimate those in charge of ritual performance like women since authority usually rests with the keepers of ritual knowledge. Ownership of spiritual properties including rituals, songs, paraphernalia, and magical powers becomes one's claim of power (Hayden & Villeneuve: 134). Women's firsthand ritual knowledge dealing with death, which causes a major schism to the integrity of the social relational network, must have been essential to keep the affected individuals spiritually and ritualistically intact. Given that the death of a member of a society devastates the community's stability, death elicits its reconstitution. It is worth noting that the women's execution of funeral essentials before, during, and after the burial was indispensable for that very reconstitution of society. In this way, women functioned as the overseers of familiar rites of passage, the kernels of the oikos's self-knowledge, the guardians of the family's ritual health, and the collective transmitter of family history.

Third, women have been predominantly associated with the manifestation of public grieving for the dead in the world's religions (Raphael: 188). For example, female professional mourners were commonly employed in all Greek, Roman, and Jewish funeral rites. Mourning was the minimal and indispensable component of decent burial, connoting honor for the dead, and women chiefly and most effectively undertook this task in funeral ceremonies. In ancient Greek culture, only women and professional mourners participated in public lamentation and likewise in ancient Rome, public displays of lamentation at wakes and funerals were performed by female family members along with professional female mourners (Erasmo: 631). In Jewish tradition, both the Scriptures and Rabbinic literature attest to the fact that skilled female mourners led the public display of grief at funerals and sang lamentations (2 Chr 35:25; Eccl 12:5; Jer 9:16–19; Matt 9:23; Mark 5:38–40; Luke 7:11–17; m. Ketubot 4:4; m. Sukkah 52a; m. Moed Katan 3:8–9). This ancient tradition continued well into the rabbinic and medieval period (Millen: 145). The association of women with publicly recognizable lamenting in the androcentric Jewish-Hellenistic society signals that women functioned as a safety valve in funeral rituals. It appears that women were safe mediums through which a family group was able to display socially acceptable grief and emotion in both Roman and Jewish societies alike.

Although the grief of the bereaved was required since the event of death was a situation calling for humanity, not callousness of heart, the restrained expression of grief and distress which was controlled by will and judgment was idealized, particularly for male members of society (Cicero, Tusculanae Quaestiones 3.28). As we observe in Seneca's statement that “for men, no time was set, because it is not honorable to mourn” (Epistulae 63.13), public display of grief was viewed as unacceptable for men because men were expected to exercise emotional restraint to present socially reckoned male virtues such as fortitude, moderation, and self-restraint even in their grief (Cicero, Tusc. 2.55). For the Jewish tradition, stoic composure in the face of death would be odd. However, the Jewish Halakhic tradition holds that women have a weaker emotional constitution than men, tending to become easily apprehensive and disturbed, and therefore holds that children, women, and slaves are exempt from certain commandments (Tractate Berachot, Tosefta 18). Also, the Torah suggests that excessive grieving or emotional frenzy guided by uncontrolled sorrows are not fitting for holy people, especially male priests (Lev 21:1–6; Deut 14:1–2; cf. Jer 22:10).

Furthermore, following the Jewish tradition, women's lamenting was regarded as dangerous because of their contact with the dead. Still, female lamentation was viewed as necessary not only in conveying emotions but also in performing a vital action for the given function. This was true for the Greeks too, as we see in Solon's early sixth-century BCE law against excessive female mourning in public (Plutarch, Solon 21). This law should not be narrowly interpreted as a deliberately anti-female policy but rather as evidence pointing to clandestine female power that could challenge the social hierarchy and existing policy (Alexiou: 21–22). Publicly, lamenting women could create a charged atmosphere of sorrow that could easily pull in others and subsequently sway public opinion. For example, in the context of war, female mourners could be considered both as protesters and as peace agents who might have had considerable influence on the crowd. Also, the number of female mourners and the intensity of their wailing in the funeral procession displayed the prestige, wealth, and political influence of the family of the deceased. Therefore, the Solonic legislation that seemed initially to restrain the female participants in the funeral, was actually designed to curb vertical rivalry among aristocratic families competing to demonstrate the family reputation through female lament, which was at times clearly stronger than merely making a statement of family superiority.

Death engenders a deep-seated sense of loss accompanied by emotional outbursts, but men needed to channel their grief safely without compromising their public persona. Both Seneca and Plutarch compared female grieving over bereavement to the weakness of unenlightened barbarians and the uneducated (Seneca the Younger, De Consolatione ad Marciam 7.3; Plutarch, Consolatio ad Apollonium 22). According to them, mourning is defined as feminine, weak, and ignoble, revealing one's ignorance, dishonor, and inferiority. Although female grieving was undervalued (as it was regarded as being associated with imperfection and typical feminine negative traits such as the female propensity of indulging in excessive sorrow), women's ability to be emotionally open to distress indirectly enabled men to experience a catharsis of their helpless emotion without damaging the socially inflexible male image of steadiness. In other words, despite the fact that the female ability to mourn was downplayed as antithetical to the expected male performance (Erker: 137), female lament might have vicariously vented the bottled up male angst caused by the impact of death. By undertaking an emotional division of labor, women let men be men so that they could maintain the socially compelled virility and psychological stability to lead in the moment of crisis. In this way, women contributed to the endurance of the social order and the values of the androcentric society.

The Correlation between Jesus’ Decent Burial and the Female Kinship Role according to the Gospels

Although female roles in funerary rites were culturally downgraded in the early Christian world, it is indisputable that women undertook dominant roles in the socially acceptable burial. It is appropriate, therefore, to interpret the Gospels’ depictions of women as taking meaningful parts in the activities related to Jesus’ burial including the preparation of his body. According to the gospel traditions, faithful women performed several key funerary rites before and after Jesus’ death, and the biblical authors might have included these accounts to indicate that Jesus was given a decent burial rather than a totally dishonorable one in spite of the shame surrounding his death as a victim of crucifixion. Biblical scholars discussed the idea that the crucified body of Jesus might have been disposed of in shame and dishonor and that from an early date the Christian tradition tried to conceal this repulsive fact. John D. Crossan claims that Jesus’ body was treated as the body of the crucified criminal in concert with Roman practice, which means that Jesus was by no means given a proper Jewish burial but either left hanging on the cross or exposed to beasts (1995: 160–88; Crossan & Reed: 230–70). Thus, Crossan's view negates the Gospels’ proclamation of Christ's resurrection (McCane 1998: 451–52; Evans 2004: 250–70). Since the Romans used crucifixion not only as punishment for criminals but also as a deterrent bearing the maximum punitive effect, it was the norm that a proper burial be denied to those condemned to this manner of death. Literary and archaeological evidence attest to this fact (Horace, Epistualae 1.16.48; Petronius, Satyricon 111; Tacitus, Annales 6.39; Suetonius, Augustus 13:1–2; Josephus, Bell. Judai. 2.306–7, 5.450). As we have already observed, the bereavement and burial of the dead by the kin group of the deceased was crucial since the proper death rituals performed by the family of the dead were a ritual demonstration that a valuable member of the society has been lost. In this regard, denial of burial for the condemned was a punitive declaration that these deaths were in no way a loss to society. Consequently, the denial of proper burial which always accompanied private and public mourning caused extreme shame for both the victim himself and his family.

In view of the Gospel authors’ tendency towards embellishment, Crossan thinks that their positive descriptions of the burial of Jesus should rather be viewed as “damage control” when dealing with Jesus’ dishonorable burial (Crossan 1991: 394; Crossan & Watts: 357). As a result of this position, certain texts from the Gospels have come under scrutiny. For example, in its simplest form of storytelling, the Gospel of Mark narrates that on the evening of the Preparation day, Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Sanhedrin who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, requested the body of Jesus from Pilate, wrapped it in linen, placed it in a rock-cut tomb and sealed the tomb (Mark 15:41–47). Then, in Luke (23:51) Joseph becomes a “good and just man,” who had not consented to the council's treatment against Jesus, and interestingly, in both Matthew (27:57) and John (19:38) he becomes a disciple of Jesus. Furthermore, the rock-cut tomb in Mark is further characterized in other Gospels as a “new” tomb (Matt 27:60), “where no one had yet been laid” (Luke 23:53) and which was “located in a garden” (John 19:39).

While the fact that Jesus was laid in a new tomb where no one had yet been laid was traditionally associated with a dishonorable burial according to the Jewish funeral custom (Brown: 233–45), the Gospel authors attempt to salvage Jesus’ burial from total disgrace by giving some hints of propriety in the actions which are associated with his burial. John 19 narrates that Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night in John 3, also came, bringing about a hundred-pound mixture of myrrh and aloes (which is an amount fit for an extravagant burial for a person of high status). Also, the Gospel of Peter, written in the middle of the second century CE, explicitly narrates that Jesus had been respectably buried in the family tomb of one of Jerusalem's most powerful and wealthy families (6:22).

The gospel authors’ attempt to give Jesus’ burial a hue of decorum is shown in their accounts of a woman from Bethany anointing Jesus. This is the most overt incident revealing the crucial female funeral role in Jesus’ passion narrative. While the Gospels of Matthew (26:6–13), Mark (14:3–9), and John (12:1–8) set the scene in Bethany at Passover time, the Gospel of Luke (7:36–50) relates the story differently by placing it during Jesus’ Galilean ministry. Luke might have possessed a separate tradition, possibly of a different incident (Buttrick: 137), though some assimilation of the stories might have happened in transmission. Also, while Matthew, Mark, and John proleptically connect this anointing to Jesus’ burial, this theological focus is absent from Luke. John's depiction of the incident also differs from that of the Synoptics on two points:

Nevertheless, for John, as for Matthew and Mark, the woman's anointing suggests burial, and the story thus forms a fitting prologue to John's passion narrative (Seim: 73; Fehribach: 87–91).

Further differences among the four accounts of the incident are the following. Luke and John agree that Jesus’ feet were anointed and wiped with the woman's hair, while Matthew and Mark have the ointment being poured on his head. In ancient Jewish tradition as reflected in the OT, oil represented joy and it was a staple ingredient to anoint priests, prophets, and kings (1 Sam 10:1; 16:1; 1 Kgs 1:39, 19:15; 2 Kgs 9:6; Ps 89:20, 133:2). Further, anointing with fragrant oil signaled Jewish festivity and fellowship (Ex 29:7; 2 Sam 14:2, 12:20; Ps 45:7; Isa 61:3; Dan 10:2–3). However, the Bethany woman's anointing of Jesus on his head in Matthew (26:7) and Mark (14:3) requires a sui generis interpretation because in this story, two theological foci of the Gospels, that is, Jesus’ messiahship and his death, are converging. Although it cannot be proven for certain that the woman was fully aware that she was anointing the Messiah, it is likely that both Matthew and Mark intended their readers to recognize the suggestive significance of her action in relation to the death of the Messiah. In the same vein, C. E. B. Cranfield comments that Jesus, who had been anointed by the Spirit at his baptism, is now fittingly anointed with oil and in this regard, a woman of Bethany who anointed him on the head deserves our attention in terms of her symbolic action (Cranfield: 415; Evans 2001: 359).

Although the discussion on the nature of the women's anointing of Jesus’ head has given rise to some divergent scholarly interpretative emphases, seeing her action as the disclosure of Jesus’ messianic identity is reasonable given the fact that the common theological thrust of Matthew and Mark is to expose Jesus’ messiahship in relation to the death of the Messiah which brings the Passion story to its culmination (Matt 16: 17–19; Mark 8:27–30, cf. Luke 9:18–21). Most importantly, Jesus’ own interpretation of her anointing his head as if for his burial (Matt 26:12; Mark 14:8) characteristically legitimates seeing a connection between Jesus’ Messiahship and his burial, thematically linked together by the woman's proleptic anointing.

Jesus’ interpretation of the Bethany woman's anointing his head not only gives her performance meaning but also places it in the context of the contemporary Jewish-Hellenistic funeral rites. Jesus identifies her anointing as an “appropriately good” (kalon, Matt 26:10; Mark 14:6) “preparation for burial” or “laying out of the body” (entaphiasmos, Matt 26:12; Mark 14:8). The Jewish funerary custom of anointing the dead, entaphiasmos (m. Shabbath 23:5) is equivalent to the Hellenistic funerary rite, prothesis. Given Jesus’ self-knowledge of what is about to happen concerning his death and the fact that the incident occurred shortly before the Passion, Jesus’ interpretation of her anointing as a proper burial preparation would be authentic (Bultman: 296; Evans 2001: 362). The authenticity of this incident can be further strengthened by Jesus’ own characteristic utterance, “Truly” (amēn, Matt 26:13; Mark 14:9). We cannot draw a conclusion based on the texts themselves regarding whether the woman was conscious that she was taking on the role of a prophet anointing the Christ, as some scholars have argued (Schüssler Fiorenza: xiii; Evans 2001: 359–60; Donahue & Harrington: 388; Horsley: 217). Although the discussion of the woman's intent behind her action would involve arguments taken from silence (Cranfield: 415; France: 550), Jesus’ own words explaining her action is far from ambiguous. What Jesus explicitly validates is not her intention, which is not clear from the texts, but the antedating outcome which her action has fulfilled in relation to his death. Therefore, the Bethany woman's anointing the head of Jesus according to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark should be understood primarily to be the preparation of his burial (“to prepare me for burial,” Matt 26:12; “beforehand for burial,” Mark 14:8). In this way, the Gospels reaffirm Jesus’ approaching death and additionally affirm that his burial has been proleptically and properly initiated by the woman within the private sphere of oikos, which is in concert with the contemporary Jewish-Hellenistic funeral practices and the customary female kinship involvement in them. When we link the Bethany woman's anointing the head of Jesus in an intimate context and Jesus’ own interpretation of her action as the preparation for his burial, this woman's kinship role is theologically implicit. It becomes evident that the very image of the Bethany woman anointing the head of Jesus in a private setting unmistakably reflects the traditional task of the chief female mourner, initiating entaphiasmos by beginning to anoint the body from its head on.

The kinship function of faithful women in Jesus’ burial continues when the women (“Mary Magdalene and the other Mary,” Matt 28:1; “Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome,” Mark 16:1; “the women who had come from Galilee,” Luke 23:55; cf. “Mary Magdalen,” John 20:1) visited Jesus’ tomb immediately after the Sabbath. The Synoptic Gospels shed light on the women who were present at the cross, and who then followed those who buried Jesus to note the resting place where the body of Jesus was finally located (Matt 27:61; Mark 15:47; Luke 23:54–56). It must have been their intention to return after the Sabbath and perform a more attentive service such as mourning and anointing their Lord's body for burial. This story of the women must be an authentic historical account rather than a later interpolation (Burskog: 73–82; Bauckham: 257–310; McCane 2003: 89–108). Given the fact that Jesus died on the cross as a result of being condemned for the alleged offense of notoriety, he was subject to the burial of a criminal, far from an honorable burial. According to the OT and the rabbinic literature, unceremonious Jewish burial was characterized by two circumstances: burial away from the family tomb and burial without rites of mourning. The Mishnah says that criminals condemned by a Jewish court were denied not only being interred in the burial place of their forefathers (1Kgs 13:21–22) but also being mourned publicly by the family (m. Sanhedrin 6.6). The same Mishnah decrees that the family members of the criminal were supposed to keep their mourning to themselves (Semahot 2.6) since the family's grieving constitutes an essential element for honorable burial which underlined the ties of kinship and family (Gen 37:34; 2 Num 20:29; 2 Sam 11:26–27; Job 2:12–13; John 11:17–19).

These faithful women's visit to Jesus’ tomb is culturally significant in the sense that the women's it can be understood only as an act of respect in commemoration of the deceased which most likely involved mourning. Hence this female performance casts an aura of a proper burial dedicated to Jesus within the circumstances associated with the death of Jesus. These female associates of Jesus behave as closest relatives to Jesus and thereby establish the presence of a kinship group, one of the key constituents of an honorable burial. Their presence compensates for the notable absence of kin other than Mary the mother of Jesus.

It is worth noting that these women's act of visiting Jesus’ tomb accords with the Jewish burial custom that on the third day the family of the deceased visits the tomb, bringing spices and ointments for further treatment of the body and mourning (Safari: 773–787; Kraemer: 21). While the Gospel of Mark (16:1) particularly states that these females purchased spices (aroma) and came to the tomb to anoint (aleipho), the Gospel of Matthew leaves out the Markan description regarding why the women visited the tomb. Matthew simply depicts the women's presence at the tomb as an ordinary family visit after the burial. It seems that the author of the Gospel of Matthew gives weight to Jesus’ own confirmation of the Bethany woman's anointing as the single necessary anointing of his body for the burial and thus intends to underline the Matthean theological stance that the proper burial of Jesus was initiated and fulfilled in advance by the Bethany woman's anointing.

Conclusion

It is highly probable that Jesus was buried, in keeping with Jewish customs, not left hanging on his cross (Evans 2005: 233–48). The Gospel accounts of female followers’ presence and roles at the time of Jesus’ death and burial are theologically loaded with purpose and meaning. The Bethany woman and the women who visited the tomb of Jesus after the Sabbath are the key role players as their funerary involvements denote that Jesus’ burial was in concert with basic Jewish funerary customs and therefore impart ceremonial decency over this significant event.

As the Gospels of Matthew and Mark approach the culmination of the Jesus-Event, the anonymous woman from Bethany makes her crucial entrance on the dramatic stage of Jesus’ Passion, precisely between the two crucial phases of Jesus’ life and death. Based on Jesus’ affirmation of the woman's anointing his head as the act of proleptic preparation for his burial in the view of his impending death, her act effectively sets the motion towards and the anticipation for the transition between the phases of life and death of the Christ in the narratival world of the Gospels.

Thus, the Bethany woman's anointing should be taken as a pivotal point for the advancement of the plot of the Gospels toward its denouement. If one accepts that the Bethany woman's anointing of the head of Jesus and Jesus’ ascription of her anointing to the preparation of his foreseen burial were authentic accounts, it is reasonable to assume that the report of this event by these Gospel authors was to save Jesus’ burial from the suspicion of shame and dishonor associated with crucifixion by providing a hint of normalcy and honor to Jesus’ burial through the Bethany woman's “proper” (kalon, Matt 26:10; Mark 14:6) burial initiation. Her act was substantiated by Jesus himself as meaningful. Jesus provided a hermeneutical angle to the perception of the Bethany woman's act: that her anointing was none other than the initiation of the funeral rite of passage which was performed in a ritualistically acceptable way. The importance of this act of the Bethany woman is once again confirmed in the story as Jesus deems her action worthy of being commemorated everywhere his Gospel is proclaimed (to euangelion, Matt 26:13; Mark 14:9). This emphasizes the key female service in the funeral rituals as a vehicle for the construction and promotion of family ritual history, in this case, the history of the Christian family.

Key female kinship roles expected in a decent burial such as anointing, taking a vigil over the body, keening, and visiting the tomb of the deceased are implicit in the gospel accounts of the faithful women's involvements at the time of Jesus’ death and its aftermath. The Bethany woman proleptically and properly initiated a burial for Jesus. Quite interestingly, at the conclusion of this decent burial of Jesus initiated by the Bethany woman, we find other women continuing in their kinship roles till their completion within the given precarious circumstance surrounding Jesus’ death on the cross. All the Gospels narrate that faithful women visited the tomb of Jesus according to the Jewish custom to continue the appropriate ceremonial services which were traditionally carried out by the family members of the deceased. Despite the fact that we are not told by the Gospels about the intent of the women—why they visited the tomb, we can safely deduce from the contextual and material inferences given in the narratival world that the women visited the tomb to undertake the familiar role necessary for a burial with decorum.

Over centuries women served as the familial overseers of the funerary ritual memory and sanctity that affects the social whole by serving as the most intimate service providers to the dead. This is the same in Jesus’ death and burial as the Gospels relate the incidents involving female presence and particular funerary roles fulfilled by them. Women feature in a major way in the early Christian memories of the last and yet most crucial journey of Jesus on earth—that is, his crucifixion which constitutes the core content of the Christian Gospel. While the death of Jesus on the cross called for an unbecoming burial because of the notoriety of the crime for which he perished, the women's presence and the funerary services they rendered to him refresh our attention to the way in which early Christians might have experienced the story of Jesus’ death and burial as a family incident involving familial dedication, respect, and expected grief for the loss of the beloved one. Consequently, all of the female involvement in Jesus’ death and burial in the gospel traditions nuance a burial with propriety.